10/12/1974 - U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan greets a constituent at the official open house for her re-election campaign headquarters 1t 1803-1805 Austin.

10/12/1974 - U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan greets a constituent at the official open house for her re-election campaign headquarters 1t 1803-1805 Austin.

Photo: Danny Connolly, HP Staff

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01/1966 - attorney Barbara Jordan in front of the Harris County Criminal Courts Building in Houston.

01/1966 - attorney Barbara Jordan in front of the Harris County Criminal Courts Building in Houston.

Photo: HP Staff

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FILE--Former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan smiles following her address to the United We Stand Conference in Dallas on Aug. 12, 1995. Jordan died Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1996, in Austin, Texas. Jordan served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp, file) less

FILE--Former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan smiles following her address to the United We Stand Conference in Dallas on Aug. 12, 1995. Jordan died Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1996, in Austin, Texas. Jordan served ... more

Barbara Jordan speaking at Southwest Texas State University at the LBJ Distinguished Lecture Series on Nov. 4, 1982. File Photo

Barbara Jordan speaking at Southwest Texas State University at the LBJ Distinguished Lecture Series on Nov. 4, 1982. File Photo

Photo: ROBERTA BARNES, STAFF

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In 1971, state Sen. Barbara Jordan congratulated two students who had graduated from the government's Job Opportunities for Youth program.﻿

In 1971, state Sen. Barbara Jordan congratulated two students who had graduated from the government's Job Opportunities for Youth program.﻿

Photo: Bill Thompson, HP Staff

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01/1966 - attorney Barbara Jordan in front of the Harris County Criminal Courts Building in Houston.

01/1966 - attorney Barbara Jordan in front of the Harris County Criminal Courts Building in Houston.

Photo: HP Staff

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05/07/1966 - Barbara Jordan reacts to winning the Texas State Senate seat for District 11.

05/07/1966 - Barbara Jordan reacts to winning the Texas State Senate seat for District 11.

Photo: Blair Pittman, HC Staff

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03/20/1972 -- State Sen. Barbara Jordan stands in front of her campaign headquarters at 1805 Austin, which opened during the weekend. Sen. Jordan is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. representative from the 18th District. less

03/20/1972 -- State Sen. Barbara Jordan stands in front of her campaign headquarters at 1805 Austin, which opened during the weekend. Sen. Jordan is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. representative ... more

Barbara Jordan was well aware of the significance of the moment when she took the podium at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden.

Being the first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at a major party convention, it took nearly three minutes for the Houston congresswoman to quiet the cheering crowd.

"There is something different about tonight," she said. "There is something special about tonight. What is different? What is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker."

A lot of racial history had passed since the party's first national convention in 1832, she said: "I feel that, notwithstanding the past, that my presence here is one additional bit of evidence that the American Dream need not forever be deferred."

Those who remember her best say that was classic Jordan: understated, eloquent, but keenly aware of her place in history.

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MILESTONES:

1966: Became Texas' first African-American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in the chamber.

June 10, 1972: Became the first African-American female to serve as acting governor of Texas through her position as president pro tem of the state Senate.

1972: Became first woman elected to represent Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1976: Was first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

1984: Inducted into Texas Women's Hall of Fame.

1994: Recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom.

2009: A statue of Jordan was erected at the University of Texas at Austin.

2011: The United States Postal Service issued the Barbara Jordan Forever Stamp.

Despite a lifetime of firsts - the first black politician elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first black woman from the South elected to Congress - Jordan was not interested in personal milestones for the history books.

"I don't think she thought of herself as one to be just breaking barriers," said Max Sherman, her longtime friend and former dean of the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs, where Jordan taught after retiring from Congress in 1979. "She did not do anything just to break a barrier. She believed it had to be something important."

For Jordan, what was important was fulfilling the promise of the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr., champion of the 1960s civil rights laws that made possible her meteoric political career.

"If Dr. King opened the doors of segregation, she taught us how to walk in and hold our heads up high," said the Rev. D.Z. Cofield, eulogizing Jordan at her funeral in 1996 at the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Houston.

If the arc of Jordan's career bent toward justice, it began in Houston's historically ethnic Fifth Ward, where she and her two sisters grew up poor. Their father, the Rev. B.M. Jordan, was a Baptist preacher who helped make ends meet working in the Houston Terminal Warehouse. Their mother, Arlyne, cleaned houses.

"We had all the necessities," recalled her sole surviving sister, Rose Mary Jordan McGowan, a retired music teacher. "Maybe we were poor and didn't really know it."

It was still a time when blacks were relegated to movie theater balconies and the back of the bus.

"She was born a black woman at a time when invidious discrimination was not only covert but overt," said Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Green, former president of the Houston NAACP. "It was a time when you could buy hats, but couldn't try them on, when you had to step off the sidewalk to allow other people to come by."

The Jordan family saw education as a way up, and all three sisters earned advanced university degrees. Before going on to get her law degree at Boston University, Jordan studied with legendary debate coach Thomas Freeman at Texas Southern University.

Freeman, widely credited with sculpting Jordan's soaring oratory, slotted her as the leadoff speaker on his championship debate team

"At the time, she had not developed the skills of refutation," he said, "but she could deliver a very forward-moving address."

Freeman's tutelage, combined with Jordan's Southern black church roots and elite Boston education, all helped develop a distinct style of elocution that her contemporaries often described as the "voice of God."

"That's what God sounds like," said Mark Updegrove, director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, where Jordan, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, lay in repose after her death at age 59 of pneumonia and complications from leukemia. "Just this powerful, booming, resonant voice. It was beautiful."

A year after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Jordan was elected to the Texas Senate, where she rose through the ranks, pushed for state minimum wage laws and won the affection of top Texas Democrats, including then-President Lyndon B. Johnson.

As a sign of respect, Gov. Preston Smith and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes arranged to be out of the state June 10, 1972. That made Jordan, as the Senate's president pro tempore, governor for a day.

Perhaps owing to the excitement of seeing his daughter become the first black woman to serve as chief executive officer of any state in the nation, her father suffered a stroke and died the next day.

"He died a proud man," McGowan said.

Jordan was elected to Congress later that year. Johnson, then in retirement, helped her get a coveted spot on the House Judiciary Committee, where she worked to expand civil rights protections for Hispanics, Native Americans and Asians.

"To me, that was her most significant legislative achievement," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat who worked for Jordan's successor in Congress, the late Mickey Leland. "Her speeches were spellbinding, but in terms of writing on the books, that had an impact around the country."

Jordan's spot on the Judiciary panel also put her in the vortex of the Watergate impeachment hearings for President Richard Nixon. It was there, amid the glare of television cameras, that she first broke into the national consciousness with a passionate defense of an all-encompassing rule of law.

" 'We the people,' " Jordan said in July 1974, recalling the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. "It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that 'We the people.' I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We the people.' "

More than a decade after she retired from Congress, President Bill Clinton thrust her into the national spotlight again, making her chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The panel, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, proposed sharp cuts in immigration to protect American workers, a plan some immigration restriction groups still promote in Jordan's name.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents Jordan's district, said that would not be the Jordan of 2016.

"She believed in giving impoverished people opportunities," she said. "She would have wanted to be both a humanitarian and fix our broken system."